Those were the days
by NineSoul
Summary: An AceLu drabble series that could be read as brotherly until chapter 4. ;) Mostly kiddie, mostly short. 6th installment: Luffy has been "de-flowered." *Rated K until later chapters (maybe).
1. A heart attack

One of the scariest days of his life happened when he was only about ten years old and Luffy was, by reasoning, only about seven. It was a hot late-summer day...

"Ace! Ace, come play with me!" Luffy called, running up to him and crashing into Ace's back. He giggled and grinned, but he didn't apologize. Typical Luffy.

"No, thanks," Ace said, just a touch sarcastic. He was still annoyed about the last time Luffy had convinced him to play together and the two had ended up cold, wet, and hungry, barely making it home before dawn. Somehow, even though he was younger, that kid managed to lead them into all kinds of trouble. This time, for sure, Ace would avoid it at all costs.

His little brother deflated significantly and wrapped his arms around Ace's middle. "Come ooon~!" Luffy whined. "It'll be really fun, Ace, I swear! I found this great-"

"I already said no, Luffy. I'm not going to change my mind," Ace told him, attempting to pry the surprisingly strong child off of him. Luffy had a very convincing pout, and utterly compelling puppy dog eyes, but he was not going to give in. He always ended up taking the fall for Luffy and his little "adventures."

The younger D brother, persistent as always, clung to Ace like static. "But you didn't even hear what it is! I was trying to tell you I found an awesome-"

"No, Luffy! Let go already!" Ace grunted, losing his calm. "Last time I got in trouble and it wasn't even my _fault_!"

Luffy held tighter to Ace's midsection. "You aren't letting me finish, Ace! I want to play with you in the new- Whoa!" The elder brother managed to squirm out of Luffy's grip in just such a way as to cause the younger to trip. "Why'd you do that, Ace? I only want to play with you!" Luffy pouted.

"And I said no! I'm not going to get in trouble again because of your stupid adventures!" Ace snapped, planting his fists on his hips and giving Luffy a hard look.

From the ground, Luffy looked up at his older brother. He put up a tough exterior, a very serious frowning face, a huffy disposition, but he was pouting pitifully. Even as he stood up and dusted off his shorts with that frown in place, Luffy looked hurt. "Fine!" Luffy stuck his tongue out at Ace. "I'll go have fun all by myself! You can just be bored!" he shouted, running off down a slope and into the trees.

And Ace thought that was that. He went about his business, staying entirely out of the way of trouble. He had lunch, he went to the town, he had a nap, he did everything he wanted to do and had a right peaceful time doing it.

Then it got dark. And he hadn't seen hide nor hair of Luffy since that morning. That was good at noon when he just wanted to relax, but it had been somewhere in the vicinity of nine hours. He was caught between worrying and getting more upset at Luffy. He could be lying in a ditch somewhere or hiding out in the yard just to spite Ace. Although neither exactly fit Luffy's innocent but strong personality, Ace had convinced himself one of the two had to be right.

When dinner time rolled around and the bell was rung to make sure the boys knew what time it was, Ace was sure Luffy would come running. At which point he, as the dignified older brother he was, would act as if he never noticed Luffy was gone.

But Luffy did not show up for dinner. There was no tell-tale growling from a closet, no food mysteriously going missing, and absolutely no Luffy. That was when Ace really started to worry. His little brother never missed dinner for anything, so what could have happened?

The first thing his mind helpfully supplied was a familiar scenario in which Luffy encountered bandits and Ace had run out into the woods to find him before it could finish playing out in his head.

His heart was pounding painfully in his chest even as he told himself Luffy was just messing around or got distracted or lost. Nothing bad could have happened to him, Ace reassured his thundering pulse, but it did not take his word for it.

"Luffy! It's past dinner time, didn't you hear?" Ace called out, expecting a disappointed shriek but only hearing cicadas. "Stop messing around, Luffy! That's getting really old!"

The morbid imagination he never knew he had started to draw pictures in his mind that he doubted he would ever be brave enough to tolerate. Why didn't he just say he would play with Luffy, anyway? All the worrying could have been avoided that way. Luffy wouldn't be lost and they'd probably be arguing or talking about something stupid in their room, instead of one half of them being missing and the other half of them deluding himself into thinking things might be okay. He was the worst big brother that ever lived.

"AAAAAACE!"

He stopped. Why did he stop? He needed to go to where Luffy's voice was and chastise the heck out of him for running off without telling Ace where he was going, but his legs were stiff. It sounded like Luffy was crying.

Ace's insides became cold and restless. A little slowly at first, he stumbled towards the echoing sounds of his baby brother's sobs.

"LUFFY!" he called, as long and as loud as his lungs would allow. "Where are you?!" His heart was almost drowning him out. The crickets were laughing at him. Maybe he was just imagining it, but he thought he heard Luffy choking. "Luffy, say something!"

A sniffle from somewhere to his left had Ace tripping over his own feet to turn.

"A-Ace..." Another sob. "Help-" a hiccup, "help me...!"

Why wasn't the moon shining brighter? Ace could hardly see the hand in front of his face, let alone his distressed little brother. "Hold on, Luffy! I'm coming for you!"

"Aaaaaace..." He was whining. Luffy only whined for three reasons that Ace knew of, and that did not sound like the "I'm Hungry" or the "Play With Me" whine. He was really unhappy. The elder D brother would even go so far as to say Luffy sounded miserable. Ace felt his chest constrict. _Just find him. Don't think about it._

Tree branches looked like thugs, leaves shifting sounded like a scuffle, something squawking sounded like a cry of pain. Ace had never had a heart attack before, but he felt like he was having one then. He couldn't feel his arms or legs, but he could feel the sweat dripping down his back and the pounding in his ribcage.

"Luffy, where are you?" Ace shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth. "I don't see you anywhere!"

"Over he-here!" Closer. He was closer, now, but to which side, Ace couldn't tell. He looked every which way, but he couldn't see Luffy through the darkness and the vegetation. It was just like hide-and-seek, he told himself, in an attempt to quell his bubbling panic. Only, Luffy was good at hiding this time. "Ace! _Please!"_

Straight ahead and to the right, that's what it sounded like. "Keep talking, Luffy! I can't tell where you are if you don't!" His legs started to feel sore when he slowed down, so he tried to run faster.

"Whoa! Hey, Ace! I-I saw you!" Luffy's voice was really close and very suddenly hopeful-sounding, but Ace had not seen him in return. "Wrong way! Ace, no, come back!"

He stood still. "I'm not going anywhere, Lu, just tell me where you are and I'll come get you," Ace told him, looking under and around everything and not seeing a single crazy black hair.

"Hi, Ace! I'm- AH! Up here! Hurry, please, _please_, hurry!"

…Up? Ace tilted his head back a little bit at a time, very slowly. He ignored the machine-gun thump of his heart and the sweaty hair sticking to his neck, looking up more and more until finally he saw two sandal feet hanging at least a dozen branches above the ground. Luffy's face was barely visible over the edge of a thick, dead-looking branch. "How… how did you get up there?!" Ace shouted, his worry drowning in relief and astonishment and rage.

"Don't be mad!" Luffy called down with a get-out-of-trouble pout in his voice, even as his legs swung freely and something cracked very near his branch.

Ace wanted to yell and scream at his little brother about all the times he's said not to climb so high up when he and Luffy both knew Luffy couldn't climb down again, and maybe he did yell a little bit, but his focus was on his baby brother, so high up in a tree, unable to get down. "Just hold on, okay? I'll come up and get-" Ace was interrupted by a hollow, dry snapping sound.

Luffy was just a bit closer, his legs swinging out a lot farther than seemed possible to Ace from way below. "Ace! Ace, I think I'm slipping!" Luffy's voice was a little shriek, scared, but not as much as it should've been considering where he was.

And then the branch snapped.

His little brother, his _baby_ brother, was falling from way up in a tree, and Ace wasn't sure he was moving at all to do anything about it. He thought he said Luffy's name as he fell miraculously between the branches of the mangled old tree. He put his arms out to help or catch or something and thought that maybe he wasn't close enough or he raised his arms too late because Luffy was falling really fast and-

Impact. Loud, heavy, sharp, hard impact. Right in front of his eyes and even a little closer, Luffy landed with a shout and a thud. Ace wrapped his arms around his little brother as tight as he could, crushing him with the mixed intentions of strangling him for getting into trouble and just making sure he was okay by hugging him. It was about when Luffy started to move away that Ace noticed his little brother had landed in the middle of his chest and Ace couldn't actually breathe.

Ace rolled onto his side slowly as Luffy sat coughing and crying beside him, and Ace tried to catch his breath. "A-are you okay?" Luffy asked him. Ace noticed a string of snot dripping down onto Luffy's shirt. "Ace?"

"Yeah," Ace wheezed, sucking in a thin breath of air that he thought was almost worse than no air at all. Luffy patted his back in the sweetest, most unhelpful gesture Ace had ever been a party to. "Are you?" he asked with a cough.

Luffy nodded emphatically, slinging tears everywhere. "Mm-hmm! S-sorry, A-Ace!" His next few attempts at speech were incoherent and nearly impossible to understand. Ace gathered, though, between sobs and sniffs, that Luffy had wanted to show him a hollow section in the tree he'd just fallen from and, when Ace turned him down, he thought he'd just go hide out and wait for Ace to get curious and come find him. But, when he got to the tree in question, Luffy had seen a cool-looking bug crawling up the trunk and decided to follow it, and the rest was history. Ace wondered how long Luffy had been up there crying for him, but he didn't ask. He didn't really want to know, he decided.

"Don't do that again, Luffy. Not ever," Ace ordered on the way home, carrying his exhausted baby brother on his back. He felt Luffy nod, but that wasn't good enough for Ace. He felt like he was going to throw up. He had been so worried about Luffy and he wasn't entirely sure he'd stopped worrying yet. "You have to promise, Lu."

Luffy snuggled his wet cheek into Ace's shoulder. "I promise."


	2. An exercise in futility

**I realized about two days ago that I hadn't put an A/N on the first chapter. -_-; Oops. I meant to say that this story will generally be K-K+ unless I decide otherwise. Each installment is unconnected (at least so far) and Ace and Luffy centric with very, very few appearances from other characters. Oh, and so far they're all kiddie fics, as I love those dearly. I will be updating this story every Thursday until I run out of prepared drabbles.**

**Now that that's done, enjoy. :)**

"Hurry up!"

"I'm hurrying!"

"Well, hurry faster! I need the broom!"

"No you don't, I do!"

From across the house, he could hear Luffy's running footsteps. "Hey! You better be bringing that here, 'cause if you're running away from me, I'm gonna make you clean the toilet!" Ace shouted and the footsteps halted. He heard his little brother coming closer, then the door burst open and the broom was thrown onto the floor in front of Ace and the pile of junk he was going through.

"Here! You do the toilet!" Luffy yelled, then grinned and took off again through the halls.

"People don't clean toilets with brooms, Luffy!" Ace called after him, "They clean toilets with red toothbrushes!"

"Hey! That's gross! Don't use my toothbrush on the toilet!" A moment after Luffy said that, Ace heard the distinct clatter of the bathroom door being slammed. He smirked. Even though it was more work, it was better for both of them if Luffy just hid somewhere and let him do the cleaning.

Ace grabbed up all the laundry out of the floor and hurried through the house, hoping Luffy had listened when he told him to at least sweep stuff out of the walkway because he couldn't see his own feet, let alone the floor. As Ace shuffled through to the laundry room, it seemed like Luffy had.

The older boy shoved everything that would fit into the hamper, and what didn't fit got thrown into a closet. The laundry room was a mess, but no one ever went in there anyway, so it wouldn't matter.

"Ace! Look at this!" Luffy's voice called from somewhere very muffled and Ace heard a sound like plastic clacking on the hardwood.

"You better not be breaking anything," Ace threatened, kicking an uncooperative blanket into the closet, slamming the door shut and stalking off to find his troublemaking brother.

Luffy was standing at the mouth of a dark room, holding about a dozen little dog figurines with two plastic puppies on the floor at his feet. He was grinning ear-to-ear and Ace could not figure out why. "Look! How weird are these?" Luffy laughed and another two figurines jumped ship onto the floor.

"Very," Ace answered, feeling his eyebrow twitch as he stared into the beady eyes of one dog copy. "I thought you were in the bathroom?"

His little brother nodded. "Yep. But I hid my toothbrush and then I remembered there's a room we haven't cleaned that has fun stuff in it and a box that I didn't know what was in there! It's dogs! And they all look the same! Isn't that strange?" Luffy asked excitedly.

Sometimes it astounded him how distractible Luffy could be. Surprisingly, this wasn't one of those times. "Put those back," he ordered calmly, turning to go back to the room he'd been cleaning before he made a laundry run. "If you're not going to help, the least you can do is not pull anything else out."

Luffy's mouth fell open. "I _am_ helping!" he stated, appalled, and he let all the plastic dogs fall with an insanely loud clatter. The younger boy didn't even blink. "You just have to tell me what to do and I'll do it, okay, Ace? I can help!"

Ace raised one eyebrow. Apparently, that struck a nerve. "O-kay... Pick up those dogs and put them back where you found them," Ace said in his most older-brotherly tone of command.

"Roger!" Luffy stooped very suddenly and gathered up as many plastic puppies as he could hold and more, overflowing his little arms with the toys. He waddled off into the dark room, dropping dogs as he went and bending down to pick them up only to drop some more. There was a loud noise that sounded painful and maybe like something broke, and Ace leaned to the side to peer into the dark room. Luffy came marching out a second later and stood as straight as Ace had ever seen him stand. "What next?!" Luffy asked loudly, puffing out his chest.

The elder D blinked. "Umm... Kitchen?" he suggested, testing the limits of Luffy's military obedience.

"Sir, yes, sir!" Luffy saluted and ran off, presumably to the kitchen, leaving Ace to stare after him. _This could be very productive_, Ace realized, a grin coming over his face. They may actually finish cleaning up for the first time, which would be a very, very good thing. Ace hurried to catch up with his mysteriously enthusiastic little brother.

The two boys went about their cleaning energetically, sweeping and soaking and scrubbing anything even remotely dirty. They were making good time, Ace noticed, between wiping the windows and tidying Luffy's room, and he felt proud. Luffy had never been so helpful before. Ace felt like, maybe this time, he had influenced or encouraged in some way the helpfulness that he was now witnessing.

"Oh, the corner!"

"Got it!"

"Why are there shirts in the cabinet...?"

"Uhh..."

"Luffy, come fix this!"

"Okay!"

Everything smelled nice and the whole house seemed to sparkle after only a short while. Luffy was a heap on the floor, no more useful than the dirty particle wad that was left of Ace's sponge, and Ace himself was leaning against the leg of either a chair or a table because his own didn't seem to exist any more. "Are we done yet?" Luffy asked, his chest heaving with the effort.

Ace's tired brain had to think on that a moment. "Almost. I don't think we got the toilet yet."

From an odd angle, Ace saw Luffy grimace. "You can't have my toothbrush," he stated, sitting up just enough to give Ace a pouty look.

"I wasn't even going to suggest it," the older boy laughed. He pushed himself up slowly, thinking of just skipping over it and knowing at the same time that he couldn't. "Wanna help?"

Luffy yawned, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "No," he mumbled, standing to follow Ace anyway. The boys shuffled through the hall using each other as support when their own limbs failed them. When they got to the bathroom, Ace and Luffy fell on their knees in front of the toilet. The next thing Ace knew, he had begun to snore.

He didn't know how long it was before he woke up, just that when he did, Luffy was lying across the toilet seat from him, muttering in his sleep. Ace marvelled at their ability to sleep on one toilet at the same time before he bothered to think about why he was awake. It didn't much matter, he figured, but he felt like he was forgetting something. He remembered they were cleaning, and that they'd almost finished, but for the life of him he couldn't think of why.

And then the bathroom door was slammed open. "What are my grandsons and two future Marines doing sleeping on the toilet?!"

**P.S. So far, the drabbles are loosely to firmly based on true stories. xD**


	3. An inability to refuse

**Oh my God, I am so sorry! I had to go to the Laundromat on Thursday and I haven't been on my laptop much lately... ^_^; Sorry, guys!**

**Anyway, for whoever actually reads this, here is the next chapter. :)**

Ace watched as Luffy shoveled food into his mouth with his hands, not even taking a seat at the table, just standing on his tiptoes. Ace's own appetite was very slightly hindered by the sight, but lucky for him his stomach was pretty resilient. And Luffy was only four. The younger boy wasn't capable of being completely disgusting if all he was doing was eating.

"Go'a go find some treasure on a mys-mys- new island! See ya later, Ace!" Luffy shouted through a mouthful, running out of the kitchen in his pirate garb which he had stolen from various closets throughout the house.

"Bye," Ace called half-heartedly, stabbing a bite of his own lunch with one chopstick. "Bring me back a crown, would ya?"

Luffy peeked back in at Ace. "'Kay!" he chirped and then he was off.

Not two minutes later, Luffy ran back into the room, his cape wrapped around his head. He ran right into Ace's leg and threw his head back, mouth wide open.

"What?" Ace asked, somewhat disturbed by his little brother's antics. "You need something?"

Luffy pointed to his gaping mouth, turning big brown puppy dog eyes on Ace. The elder D. brother emptied his chopsticks of meat that had been on its way to Ace's mouth into Luffy's silent shout. His baby brother began to chew almost immediately, grinned at him, and then left the room once more.

Ace laughed quietly to himself, shaking his head and delving back into his meal. Halfway to a bite of leek, however, Ace was snoring before his head hit the table. When he woke up again, eye-to eye with his bento, he was sure it had been fuller before he'd fallen asleep. But it could be a simple mistake, he told himself. Or he could've just eaten it in his sleep. It wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

When Luffy next ran into the kitchen, cavernous maw at the ready, Ace just held out his chopsticks with a carnivore's prize at the end. The pretend pirate clamped his teeth down around the meat loudly, waved, and ran away again.

Ace shook his head in amusement at his brother, but then he noticed his lunch was more than half gone. _Did he do that?_ Ace questioned internally, frowning at his near-vegetarian bento. Luffy was famous for stealing a bite or two of Ace's lunch almost every day, but what was happening to the rest? If Ace hadn't seen Luffy consume an entire bento and practically lick the lunchbox clean, he'd think Luffy was the one stealing all his food. But, also taking into consideration that Luffy was the least sneaky person Ace had ever met he doubted that was the case. Ace must've eaten it in his sleep.

"Whoa! It's the Marines! They're trying to take our treasure! C'mon guys! We gotta break their sails and pillage their cannonballs!" Following Luffy's shout, there was a loud thud. Ace chewed his lunch a little slower, waiting for a howl of pain or a continuance of piracy, but nothing happened. Luffy was silent.

He was just about to get up and go check on his little brother when Luffy came lopsidedly galloping into the room like one of his legs was broken. "Are you okay?" Ace asked, not terribly concerned. Luffy was given to overreacting when he got hurt. He could be such a crybaby sometimes.

"Yeah… I just need some meat to heal!" Luffy exclaimed, unshed tears glistening in his eyes and tarnishing his tough guy expression. He then opened his mouth wide like a baby bird and stared at Ace.

Ace had heard that line before. Every time Luffy got even remotely hurt, he would claim he needed meat—more specifically, Ace's lunch meat—and he would perk up and run off as soon as he got what he wanted. He had devoured many a bento that way. Ace would not let him do it again, he decided.

"There's some cubed pork in the fridge, I think," Ace told him boredly.

As expected, Luffy didn't like that suggestion much. The younger boy shook his head quickly, clamping his mouth shut as he did so. "I can't!" he shouted.

"Can't what? I wasn't asking a question," Ace stated, taking a somewhat show-offy bite of his lunch.

Luffy did a weird little dance like he was trying to jump up and down but couldn't get off the ground. "I can't!" he announced again, opening his mouth even wider. He didn't even attempt to explain what it was that he couldn't.

"Well, that's right. You 'can't' have my lunch. You already had your own and snack time will be in an hour or so," Ace reasoned, but Luffy wasn't having it.

The unshed tears in Luffy's eyes began to adjust their title with first a sparkle and then a drop. Luffy's bottom lip quivered; his eyebrows drew together; his little hands gathered fistfuls of his shirt's hem. "Please?" he asked sweetly with a shaking voice.

Ace's mouth fell open a bit. He knew he was being subjected to the unfair and entirely intentional adorability of his baby brother, but the knowledge didn't stop the affects. He sighed, dropped his shoulders and hung his head, but all of it was half-hearted. Ace pushed his bento towards Luffy in resignation.

Luffy's face lit up. "Thanks, Ace!" he cheered, grabbing a chopstick and stabbing the remaining meat like a kabob before running off.

"You're welcome…" he mumbled, staring down at his vegetarian lunch and wondering how long it would be before he stopped falling for Luffy's charms. He doubted that would ever happen, but he could still hope that one day he'd be able to eat his own food all by himself.


	4. A divergence from the plan

**I'm working on the 5th installment (still), but here this is anyway. This one is... a little weird. And I can't remember if I edited, but I don't care. Just be warned, there is material in here that can be taken as incestuous, so if you do not care for the AceLu pairing (however light and fluffy), you may take the span of this A/N to click away. Go on, then.**

**Still here? Okay. Prepare yourself. ;)**

He was lying in the grass with a book on his face. Again. He thought that fooled Luffy, and it did a little bit, at first, but he knew it was a trick now. Luffy knew that Ace only wanted to be left alone, but telling a lie in any form was not okay. Ace had told him something along those lines, so when Luffy caught Ace lying he knew had to do something.

But, he did not know what to do.

Luffy was never the one to give punishment. Ace was always talking at him about this- or that-a-thing, standards and politeness and something or other else that Luffy couldn't remember. Maybe he could think of something from what he'd heard Ace say... But, come to think of it, what had Ace said? What kinds of things had he done to teach Luffy not to lie?

_Oh, I remember!_ Luffy thought, dropping a fist into his palm. _He takes away what I lied about! _However, he couldn't think what of Ace's he could take that would get him to stop lying about being busy.

As he mulled it over, Luffy came out from behind his vantage point and approached his "sleeping" brother. He couldn't hear any snoring, so he knew Ace wasn't really asleep. If only that book weren't covering Ace's face, Luffy was sure he'd see a sneaky smile. And then he had a revelation. _I can take the book!_

Luffy tiptoed slowly forward, his footsteps cushioned to the point of nonexistence by the grass. Much the same way as he had never given punishment, Luffy had never been sneaky, but he thought he was doing a good job. At least, Ace didn't seem to have noticed him, which was almost as commendable as receiving a ninja award, Luffy thought.

He stood as far away from Ace as possible to get the book, certain Ace would reach out at any time and yank his balance out from under him. Similar things had happened in the past, and Luffy could learn from his mistakes after five or six tries. Once he had a corner of the book cover between his fingers, Luffy yanked it towards himself, squeaked in anticipation, clutched the book to his chest and ran like hell.

oOo

After a few breathless minutes of sprinting, he realized Ace wasn't chasing him. Luffy had dropped the book what felt like a mile back in his panic, he remembered as he skidded to a halt and leaned against the nearest tree to catch his breath.

Didn't Ace want his book back? Or had he followed Luffy until the book was dropped a while back? Luffy didn't know. He hadn't been paying so much attention to anything other than not being caught and creamed. Maybe Ace had chased him? Whatever. He'd have to risk going back and getting caught to check if Ace had moved, and Luffy didn't know that that was worth it.

But he went back anyway. It took Luffy a strangely long time to walk back to the place where Ace had been lying in two senses of the word, but to his surprise Ace was still there. And he was still pretending to sleep. Luffy frowned.

This time, Luffy walked boldly over to stand beside Ace. He didn't know how he expected Ace to react, but that wasn't it. Even though he'd been a little scared, Luffy had hoped for at least a bit of rage or something. Ace wasn't supposed to just "sleep" through it.

With a pout on his lip and a boldness of character, Luffy kicked Ace in the side, already beginning to argue that it hadn't been a kick, but instead just an accident. However, Ace barely moved. The elder boy pulled a face in his "sleep" and shifted slightly away from Luffy, but that was it. No shock, no shouting, no normal Ace-ness.

So, he kicked him again. And still nothing happened.

Luffy puffed out his cheeks and crossed his arms over his chest. Now there was something else to punish, he decided. Ace was ignoring him. Luffy hated being ignored.

Thinking quickly and moving quicker, Luffy snatched up Ace's left foot, removed his shoe and ran off like he'd done with the book. _That'll show him!_ Luffy thought, running even faster.

The shoe was ditched in record time when Luffy spotted a bush that seemed like the perfect hiding spot. He hadn't run as far as before, but as he dove behind the chosen bush Luffy felt just as out of breath as after his first hasty escape.

But, as with the first installment of Luffy's punishment for Ace, his big brother did not come after him. Luffy waited for what felt like hours, but still Ace didn't come bursting through the trees announcing his plans for revenge. Relief did not outweigh disappointment in Luffy's mind.

The younger D. brother marched back to where his older brother was still "sleeping." He pouted at the boy lying in the grass and flopped down on his bottom next to him. Luffy considered waiting there like that until Ace noticed him and asked what was wrong, but after a few minutes of deliberation, he decided against it. If Ace was ignoring him, sitting silently was probably what he wanted Luffy to do. Luffy did _not_ want that.

"Aaaaaaaceee…!" Luffy whined, crossing his legs lotus-style. "Are you ignoring me?"

Ace did not move, nor make a sound. Luffy took that as a "yes."

"I know you aren't really sleeping! You always snore when you sleep and you're not snoring!" Luffy poked a freckled cheek and Ace, without a flinch or a word, began to snore loudly.

"Hey! Stop pretending to sleep! I know you're awake 'cause you started snoring when I said you always snore when you sleep!" Luffy shouted accusingly, pointing at Ace.

His big brother promptly snored louder. Luffy had had it with him.

"That's it!" Luffy threatened, leaning over Ace's face and pulling Ace's left eyelids apart and staring into his eye. "Ace! Give me something you care about so I can hide it!" Luffy ordered.

Despite his, he thought, very evident lack of patience with the situation, Ace did not move or stop fake-snoring when Luffy yelled. If anything, he snored louder. Luffy didn't know how he'd lived up to that point with such an annoying older brother.

"I'm serious!" Luffy told him, poking his face again before crossing his arms over his chest. "You have to give me something so I can punish you!"

Finally, Ace moved. The corner of his lips turned up in a small smile. Luffy was catching his breath to gloat about making Ace reveal himself when his brother sat up quickly, grabbed either side of Luffy's face and kissed him square on the mouth. Luffy didn't attempt to talk with Ace's lips covering his, but he did try to convey his confusion with an expression. He wondered when Ace was going to give him something of Ace's for him to hide.

Without opening his eyes, Ace flopped down on his back in the grass, fingers intertwined on his chest. He'd gone back to pretending to sleep.

Luffy could not make heads or tails of Ace's behavior, but he didn't mind the kiss part. In fact, Ace hadn't kissed Luffy since they were little and—although Ace would argue that Luffy was still little—Luffy was old enough, apparently, to not receive kisses anymore. He missed that.

"Ne, Ace," Luffy said, poking his brother's shoulder repeatedly, "do that again."

Ace opened one eye just a crack. "Aren't you mad at me?" he asked, quirking a smile and an eyebrow.

Luffy frowned. Was he? He didn't think so. And if he was mad he couldn't think why. "No," he replied easily. "Why would I be?"

The elder D. brother grinned widely. "No reason," Ace said and sat up to kiss him again.

**=/=**


	5. An afternoon nap

**Hello, and Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you all eat lots of tryptophan-uh, I mean turkey...**

He was nodding off. He was sitting up on the couch, nodding off. And it was the cutest thing ever.

Ace considered himself a good brother a lot of the time, but as he sat there next to Luffy, holding in what promised to be hysterical laughter, he had to question that. Maybe he wasn't such a great brother after all. The only thing he knew for certain right then was that Luffy, his cute baby brother, was being as adorable as he'd ever been and was about to fall over in the process.

The words "be careful" or "at least lie down if you're going to sleep" did not rise to Ace's lips. He wouldn't say them, couldn't. All his efforts were put towards not laughing out loud and startling his little brother awake. As cute as it might be to see Luffy's eyes flutter open and look at him tiredly only to fall back asleep, Ace didn't want to chance actually scaring him.

As the last of Luffy's consciousness receded, he slowly reclined against the back of the couch. The second Ace thought he had relaxed, Ace began to laugh, quietly at first, and then almost violently. He wasn't sure why it was funny, but whatever the reason he just couldn't stop laughing.

Suddenly, Luffy sat up, whining the way he did when he was uncomfortable and Ace's laughter caught in his throat. He started to console his baby brother as Luffy sat up and pushed himself away from the back of the couch. Luffy hadn't opened his eyes and, even as Ace watched him, Luffy fell quiet and still, showing no sign that he'd been even remotely awake.

Ace wasn't sure what to do about that. If Luffy fell over again at that point, he would fall right off the couch. But on the contrapositive, if Ace tried to move him, he might end up making Luffy cry. By his reckoning, they were in a tight spot.

"It's okay, it's okay," Ace chanted quietly, maneuvering a folded leg behind Luffy to catch him if he started to fall. As if on cue, Luffy lowered himself onto Ace's leg and, after a moment of restlessness, went back to sleep.

And then they were in a tight spot again. Luffy was asleep on his leg and Ace couldn't help himself but to start laughing again. He covered his mouth with both hands to stifle the sounds of happiness and it did help a little. Until he just couldn't contain the raw amusement bubbling inside his chest and let loose a boisterous laugh. He still didn't know why he found it so funny, but he just couldn't stop laughing. And, after everything, Luffy didn't wake up until Ace had fallen asleep with one leg numb under the weight of his younger brother.

**Very drabble-ish, don'tcha think? Really short. But hopefully cute. ;D**


	6. A heartfelt misunderstanding

**Hello everyone! A day late, but not a buck short, I'd like to think. Just a small warning, this chapter may rub people the wrong way in a few places, but I think it's a riot. Y'know. In a good way.**

It was breezy but nice for early spring, and Portgas D. Ace was enjoying it to the fullest. Luffy had run off after a butterfly like a little kid, even though he was almost eleven years old, so he was on his own in the beautiful weather. Remembering his peace, he sighed contentedly. He should've thought to send Luffy after a butterfly sooner.

Ace was at the top of a hill somewhat hidden from civilization, soaking up the sun that filtered through scantily-clad tree branches. He was tempted to take a nap there, in the loveliest spot he'd ever seen away from the ocean, but he knew the minute he dozed off Luffy would somehow find him and put an end to his rest. _Then again, maybe that means I should sleep while I can…_ And at the thought, whether he wanted to or not, Ace dropped off to sleep.

When he woke up again, it was late afternoon, judging by the bright orange fading light, and he could hear sniffling from somewhere nearby. Ace looked around, his head bumping into a tree root in the process of locating the sound.

Crawling up the side of the hill to Ace's left was a dirty, leafy mop of raven hair, followed by a red, tear-streaked face that Ace was very familiar with. However, the distraught expression was not one he knew to frequent that familiar face.

Ace sat up on his elbows, eyebrows knitting together. "Luffy, what happened?" he asked as his little brother climbed further up the hill to reveal nicks and scrapes all over his arms and face. The last time Ace had seen Luffy that scuffed up had been after an unfortunate run-in with their "loving" grandfather. That had been months ago but he still wasn't mentally prepared for another visit.

The younger boy sniffed, frowning at Ace with tears sparkling on his eyelashes. "I've been looking all over for you!" Luffy said, bottom lip split in one place and sticking out. "I need your help, Ace!"

"It's not Gramps, is it?" Ace asked, sitting up a little further.

Luffy shook his head emphatically. "No," he whined, crawling up to Ace and sitting beside him with his skinny little knees dirty and bleeding. "Ace, you- you have to help me find them and- and k-kick their asses!"

With the urgency of the worst possible scenario he could imagine eliminated, Ace lay back down in the grass with a sigh. "Good." He folded his hands over his chest and watched Luffy more calmly now. "So what is it?"

His little brother gawked at him. "Why are you relaxing? Ace, it's h-horrible!" Luffy cried, grabbing Ace's shoulders with his dirt-covered hands. "Th-this… I couldn't b-beat them! There were f-five of them, Ace, a-and they were all b-bigger than me!" He hiccupped and turned his head to rub his runny nose on his sleeve without letting go of Ace. "C'mon, get up!"

Reluctantly, Ace sat up and faced his tearful brother. Normally he would be very concerned right about then, and he was, really, he was worried about Luffy, but lately his brother had been picking fights with people in his weird way to try and prove his strength. None of them had agreed to fight Luffy before, but if a bunch of kids from town had decided they were annoyed with Luffy always telling them to fight him, then what could Ace really do? Luffy had wanted them to fight him and fight they had. The issue was resolved in Ace's mind, though he may seek some form of revenge when Luffy's not paying attention. Best not teach him to get revenge, Ace figured. "Luffy," he began, preparing an exhausting explanation about how Luffy couldn't complain when it was his own fault.

"No, Ace! I was- Ugh, what is that word?" Luffy scrunched up his face, hiccupping and sniffing and trying very hard, judging by the look on his face, to think of the word he wanted.

_Now that_, Ace thought, _**that**_ _is different_. If Luffy couldn't think of a word, he would gloss over it or make one up. Luffy's trying to come up with the exact word was an alarming divergence from the norm. "Hey, don't hurt yourself, Lu. Calm down and tell me what you mean to say," Ace said, hopefully soothingly.

The younger D brother, with eyebrows furrowed, started shaking his head. "I c-can't remember the _word_ for it, Ace," he whined, blinking fresh tears out. Whatever it was that he couldn't think of the word for, Ace observed, was really bothering Luffy. Even more than their "meat red-zone" problem of two years ago and that had been a doozy. He wasn't sure if he wanted to know what the current issue was or not.

"Luffy, are you alright?" Ace asked, interrupting Luffy's thoughtful pause. He inspected more carefully his little brother's scrapes that covered every other inch of his visible skin. The scratches were small and reddened but, apart from the ones on his knees, hardly any of them were bleeding. To Ace they looked self-inflicted, and he was not unfamiliar with Luffy's accidental self-wounds. "Did someone push you?"

His baby brother nodded, pouting like he was eleven months old rather than eleven years. "Yeah! They pushed me a lot and Ace they- they-" Luffy took a deep breath, presumably to calm himself. It didn't appear to have worked. "They took—no—they stole my- my-"

As Luffy struggled with the words, stuttering and hiccupping, Ace made sure Luffy's hat was accounted for. It had been the only non-food inanimate object that Luffy ever cried about and it was hanging by a string around his neck in the middle of Luffy's back. _So, what is it?_

"I… I… Ace what's the word?" Luffy whined, pleading with confused and watery eyes for his big brother to just save him from any and all issues he was having. "It's something like in- No… R…? An-… Or is it en-something?"

Ace rubbed a clump of dirt from Luffy's chin with his thumb. "You've gotta tell me what you're trying to find the word for, or I can't help," Ace reasoned, really not liking the sound of that.

Luffy was practically red in the face from concentration when he exclaimed in a slightly proud and extremely bothered voice: "Deflowered! That's it, Ace! They pushed me down and I tried to s-stop them, but…!"

He may have choked on his next breath, but that was the least of his worries. "Come again?" Ace wheezed, squinting as though he could see the words in the air if he only looked hard enough.

"Deflowered, Ace, didn't you hear me? Now you've got to help me beat them up because they took my.- my- my…" Luffy trailed off into tears.

For a moment, Ace stupidly wondered where Luffy had learned that word, but his brother was growing up. Everyday Luffy changed a little more, looked more like a big kid. No matter how big he got, though, the thought of people even saying things like that to Luffy, let alone doing them, made his blood boil. Even if his baby brother's understanding of the word was skewed and he hadn't been defiled the way Ace was thinking, he wasn't so sure he could avoid committing homicide.

"Who did it?" Ace questioned seriously, pulling Luffy into a hug. He felt like an idiot and a horrible brother and all he felt like he could do at the moment was just hold Luffy. He shouldn't have left him alone. He should've known all along that his little brother was too cute to go unnoticed. He should've been there.

Luffy sniffled into Ace's shirt. "I dunno. There were five boys there, Ace! They're n-not my fr-friends!"

Ace ground his teeth together. "It's okay, Luffy, it's okay," he soothed, helping his brother stand up. "Do you think you would recognize them if you saw them?"

The younger D brother nodded, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. "Yeah, I think so."

"Then let's go." Ace led his brother down the hill very carefully, trying his best to keep his fiery want to murder in check.

oOo

They hadn't been in town long when the sounds of raucous laughter led them straight to a group of boys goofing off in front of a shop. Luffy flung out his arm and grabbed on tightly to Ace's shirt, pointing at the boys and hiding at the same time. "That's them!" he announced, ducking behind Ace. Knowing how brave his little brother usually was only made Ace that much more upset.

"Hey, you!" Ace shouted, his fists two steps ahead of him. He didn't have anything else to say. All he wanted was for the first offender he could reach to be facing him when he threw the first punch. The group were teenagers, maybe a little older than himself, but no one could have been a match for him then.

Luffy stood back and gave Ace pointers, including air punches and kicks, but Ace had it handled even without Luffy's help inside of two minutes. The people around them, standing at a very safe distance away, were all gaping at him and the pile of groaning mud stains in front of him, but Ace could not care less. None of them could make him feel bad for defending his baby brother. A proud smile crept across Ace's face with a very small delay. He wasn't sure he was done with those assholes, not by a long shot, but for the moment he had a brother to coddle.

As he turned around, Ace started to ask Luffy if he was alright, but a little raven-haired monkey blew right past him. Luffy dropped down onto his knees beside one of the boys Ace had just knocked out and began pawing through the boy's pockets and bag. "What… what are you doing?" Ace asked, forgetting for a moment that he was seething and that he was supposed to be hugging Luffy's fears away.

"Aha!" Luffy pulled something from the boy's person and then Luffy grabbed his straw hat off his back and put whatever he'd taken into it. Before Luffy got a chance to answer Ace's question, whether he was going to or not, some grown-ups started shouting about "rascals" and "gonna pay the medical fees" and they had to get out of there fast. "Run, Ace, run!" Luffy laughed, dashing back the way they came before Ace had even moved.

"Wh- Luffy! You didn't answer my question!" Ace called to Luffy's back, nonetheless sprinting after his baby brother.

The townspeople followed them as far as the tree line before giving up to tend to the injured boys or something less like being an angry mob. As soon as they were a minute or two into the clear, Ace and Luffy stumbled and stopped for breath. Ace leaned against a tree and watched Luffy, who was laughing and huffing and leaning forward with his hands on his knees. "Are you alright?" Ace asked.

Luffy looked up at him and grinned. "Yeah! Thanks, Ace! That was _awesome_!"

When it seemed like that was all he was going to say, Ace repeated his earlier question with a slight change: "What were you doing before?"

His little brother tilted his head to one side. "I was getting my flowers back. Isn't that obvious?"

By the look on his face, Luffy actually believed it _was_ obvious, but Ace did not. "Luffy… That's not possible," Ace said patiently. He really didn't want to take away whatever hope Luffy had, but it seemed almost as cruel to let him believe that he could-

"Yeah it is," Luffy said with a laugh, and he pulled a ring of flowers out of his hat quite literally. "See?"

Ace's brain ceased all other function besides figuring out what that flower crown meant. _Was Luffy talking about literal…?_ That couldn't have been, Ace tried to tell himself, but he was compelled to ask. "Luffy. That whole time… By 'deflowered'… Were you talking about _real_ flowers?"

His younger brother frowned slightly. "Of course I was. What else would I be talking about, Ace?"

Ace could tell his face was doing something weird, but he couldn't for the life of him control it. "You mean… I beat up those guys just now… because they stole your… _literal_ flowers?"

"Yes," Luffy said simply, nodding and staring at Ace like he was slow in the head. "Is something wrong?"

He'd beat up a bunch of kids for taking some flowers. He'd been angrier than hell that someone had hurt his brother when it was really just flowers. He thought he would kill some kids over flowers. Just flowers.

Ace burst out laughing so loud he startled his brother. "Are you kidding me?" he barked out between guffaws, clutching his gut. "All that over _flowers_?"

Through laugh-teary eyes, Ace could see that Luffy was not happy. "Yeah," Luffy said, pouting and straightening the flower crown in his hands. "But that's because my flowers are for Ace!"

The elder D brother began choking on his laughter.

**The end! HAHAHAHAHA. But, no, srsly. I have no idea when I'm going to get to the next chapter, as I am working on my other stories to try and have them all updated by Christmas, but I'm going to see what I can do to not take too long. ****J**** If we don't see each other before then, Happy Holidays~**


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